Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
Starring: Paul Schneider, Olivia Munn, Kevin Heffernan, Nat Faxon, Wood Harris
Running Time: 95 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: Featurette, Trailer
In the late 1990s puerile comedy was making the studios big money. Films like AMERICAN PIE (1999), and its first sequel AMERICAN PIE 2 (2001) made a combined $500 million worldwide. Whilst BEERFEST (2006) missed the boom by quite a while it hasn’t dented director Jay Chandrasekhar’s enthusiasm for nudity, sperm, and masturbation, as his latest movie THE BABYMAKERS proves.
Focusing on a couple Tommy (Schneider) and Audrey Macklin (Munn), who try, and fail, to make a baby, the film descends into farce as Tommy and his buddies Wade (Heffernan) and Zig Zag (Faxon) try to procure a sperm sample Tommy supplied whilst saving for his wedding five years earlier – when his sperm worked. Cue enough semen jokes to make even the biggest whore gag, and the most simulated masturbation ever put on screen.
THE BABYMAKERS is a curious film. At its most juvenile it is quite funny, even laugh out loud on a couple of occasions, however when it tries, and fails, to deliver on an emotional level the film becomes tedious, due in no small part to the very poor cast. Written by Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow (BLACK KNIGHT and SAY IT ISN’T SO) the script has an abundance of crude jokes, but worryingly it also has a moderate dose of racism thrown in when director Jay Chandrasekhar turns up as Ron Jon (yes, he is of Indian descent). The script is reliant on the talents of the cast, and as such fails badly.
As a comedy THE BABYMAKERS is average: sometimes very funny, others very dull and formulaic. As a complete film it misses its target by a distance not too dissimilar to that between the Earth and the Moon. Unless you’re a twelve year old boy – or into watching dudes wank – give this a wide berth.
Extras: An inoffensive featurette and run of the mill trailer is all you get.
THE BABYMAKERS is available on DVD now and you can check out the DVD trailer below
